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Prosecutor as bully

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Re: Prosecutor as bully

#141

Post by jlgreco »

mscarborough wrote: post #127
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're lucky we can get this kind of outrage built up when it is, and then fix it for everyone. These laws get passed when the innocent victim is a sympathetic white girl, why can't they get repealed when the innocent accused is a sympathetic white boy?

No laws are being rewritten posthumously for 'sympathetic white girl'. There's really no need to inject 'prosecuted white guy' into the conversation.

Rewritten? Perhaps not, but he said passed.

There are numerous examples of laws that have 'little innocent white girls' as catalyzing moments, to the extent that they are often named after the victims, if only in popular media. Just from the top of my head and a few seconds on google: numerous proposed "Caylee's Laws", Chelsea's Law, Marsy's Law, Jessica's Law, Megan's Law...

There is a metric bucketload of laws named after people here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws

I don't really feel like filtering that by "young female victim", it would be too depressing.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#142

Post by objclxt »

erichocean wrote: post #44
Benferhat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prosecutor's job is to charge you with the violation of every statute that the evidence indicates you violated, and use that breadth of charges as leverage in a plea negotiation. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

People in power need to take responsibility for what they do. Claiming they're "just doing their job" is how the worst stuff that ever happens to humanity by other humans goes down. For more, check out The Lucifer Effect . Doing evil in the name of your "job" is a bug in the human psyche. We need to do everything we can to mitigate its effects, and that starts by not staying stupid shit like "Hate the game, not the p…

Laws are meant to be beneficial to society as a whole. In the US, laws must be passed by a democratically elected body.

The judicial system is one of the few areas where "just doing your job", no matter how 'evil' it may seem, is morally right. Even the most heinous and obviously guilty defendant deserves the best defence available. And similarly, is a prosecutor enforcing a law that society chose to enact inherently evil?

It is far, far better to take all this outrage and anger and direct it towards changing the outdated laws that govern computer crime.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#143

Post by daniel-cussen »

rprasad wrote: post #70
temphn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming and shaming Carmen M. Ortiz for destroying the life of a young man is exactly what is necessary. She brought 13 felony counts against him for downloading articles that should be freely available, after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges. Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, in the same way that she surely thought her prosecution of S…

Or, you know, you could just call your local Congressperson and complain. This is far more likely to have a direct impact on her job (performance of, or continued employment) than some random internet "naming and shaming." It is also far more likely to bring about the structural changes necessary to prevent this from happening again. ...as they have disabled the voice of the people by routing around jury trials. Aaro…

> Aaron had the option of going to trial. It was his constitutional right. He chose to kill himself instead.

It was not a real option. He had run out of money for an expensive, complex case. He was sure to lose.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#144

Post by AnthonyMouse »

anon3456 wrote: post #128
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would you prefer the US charge more innocent people with crimes to bring down the conviction rate? Don't be ridiculous. What I would prefer is that more of the innocent people who are currently charged not be convicted or coerced into a guilty plea by the prospect of outrageous penalties and soul-crushing legal fees. >People indicted by Grand Juries should end up getting convicted the vast majority of time, otherwis…

> What I would prefer is that more of the innocent people who are currently charged not be convicted or coerced into a guilty plea by the prospect of outrageous penalties and soul-crushing legal fees. Swartz was guilty. Even Lessig's post decrying Swartz' treatment intimates as much. Again, perhaps the things he did shouldn't have been crimes, or at least not felonies, and the penalties shouldn't have been so severe,…

>Swartz was guilty. Even Lessig's post decrying Swartz' treatment intimates as much.

I didn't read it as such. I read it as Lessig saying that what prosecutors accused him of doing was a crime, but that Swartz may have informed him of contrary facts in confidence which he was not at liberty to disclose.

Moreover, we don't know that someone is guilty until after they have been convicted, right? Swartz was never convicted (and obviously at this point never will be), so he is innocent until proven guilty.

But your point about distinguishing between guilt under the law and moral culpability is well-taken. I much more strongly care to ensure that the sort of thing Swartz was accused of doing not be illegal than care whether Swartz in actual fact did the thing that I believe should not be illegal.

>In fact, rather than being part of the problem, if juries were so emboldened, they could mitigate many of the injustices of our system themselves through the use of jury nullification.

I don't disagree with that, and it isn't the jury I blame for the outcomes, it's the process. As you mention, the Grand Jury hears from only one side in a sealed proceeding. The outcome of that is entirely predictable. And changing it would be quite welcome, but unless and until we change it, we can't assume that as-implemented it works as the theory says it should, contrary to all available evidence.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#146

Post by lancefisher »

btilly wrote: post #133
dmix wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we go about getting this message across to her and other key people (legally)? I'm interested in helping.

My suggestion, start a whitehouse petition. If that gets to 25k people, the whitehouse will respond. If Reddit gets involved, 25k people is quite doable. The wording of the petition should be as strong as possible. I'm off with my children now, but if I get back tonight and I see a decent petition on this, I will definitely sign it. Edit: D'oh, the petition has already been written. I just had to sign it.

Here's a link:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...

And a second petition to pardon Aaron:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/posthumously-pardo...

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#147

Post by PrudenceYuris »

Benferhat wrote: post #36
pbateman wrote: post #2

From the link in the article: Depending on how many of the counts Swartz is found guilty of, the sentence could conceivably total 50+ years and fine in the area of $4 million. What an absurd and unreasonable level of punishment. Carmen Ortiz, the prosecutor who was behind this[1] needs to be publicly shamed. [1] (source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-c... )

The prosecutor's job is to charge you with the violation of every statute that the evidence indicates you violated, and use that breadth of charges as leverage in a plea negotiation. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Hate the game or play the game.

Destroying her reputation. Stripping her of every professional friendship by making her a pariah. Piling on in every conceivable forum against her. Making it cost her every every she ever earned, her home, her retirement, and every penny of any family member willing to help her would be perfectly fitting and proportionate in that light.

And yet you will see people here say "Write a note to your Congressman" and that should be the limit of it. Bah.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#148

Post by jlgreco »

msutherl wrote: post #139
ceol wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think your internet activism will cause her family and friends to "dump" her?

I hate to say this, but 4chan will take care of this and they will be effective.

That's a crapshoot. Either they will get the local media to care about it for a day or two, then fizzle, or they will get the local pizza place really pissed off, or someone will do something drastic and a bunch more arrests will start being made.

Getting 4chan to apply the right amount of pressure to the right place seems to be like trying to get an apathetic redneck to remove a tree stump for you. Chances are he's either going to whack it a few times with an axe and declare it unmovable, or blow it up. (To be fair, blowing it up works great, but can get people in trouble rather easily)

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#149

Post by larrys »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #103
larrys wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges" From a practical matter a prosecutor might decline to prosecute if they can't get the cooperation of someone (needed to testify or provide evidence) but this should have no bearing on whether to prosecute or not. You could have a crime committed and the crime is worthy of prosection. The fact that someone believes (as an extreme example) that a person who committed assault…

>but this should have no bearing on whether to prosecute or not. "We were just following orders" and "We were just doing our jobs" and "We were doing what the law told us to do" aren't the indefensible moral positions you seem to think they are. Laws are written by men and enforced by men. Just the idea that all prosecutors are slaves to these laws is so incredibly naive I almost don't know what to say to you, but I'…

"Just the idea that all prosecutors are slaves to these laws is so incredibly naive I almost don't know what to say to you"

You are implying things that I did not say.

Please quote specifically what I said that gives you the impressions that I am "so incredibly naive". In other words indicate where I said or implied that prosecutors don't have discretion and what that has to do with what I did say which had to do specifically with the person "harmed".

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#150

Post by jlgreco »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #132
temphn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming and shaming Carmen M. Ortiz for destroying the life of a young man is exactly what is necessary. She brought 13 felony counts against him for downloading articles that should be freely available, after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges. Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, in the same way that she surely thought her prosecution of S…

> Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, ... This is Timothy McVeigh thinking, and it makes you a loser just like it did to McVeigh. You can never kill or destroy enough people to defeat Washington, D.C. To win you have to think like Osama bin Laden: turn the system against itself. Wholesale, not retail. Scale up, not one off. TSA, not EFF.

Timothy McVeigh blew up children. We are proposing someone lose their job.

Hyperbolic much?

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